Mermaid Who’d Lost Her Way

I’ve been driving from the same office to the same house for thirty plus years and have always enjoyed the opportunity to unwind a bit and look forward to getting home. I do though like variety and thus frequently change my route.

It’s long enough (+/- ten miles) that many alternatives present themselves and by now I’ve tried most. Attendant cerebrations are the typical jumble of present past and future unless I take one certain very short industrial stretch connecting two busy streets with windowless rusty buildings on either side.

I first got the sense of the place years ago when a vehicle slowed down in front of me, passenger door opened, woman jumped out, and car sped away before door was properly shut. Suspicions aroused I began to notice the demeanor and countenance of the disheveled females standing there all alone.

Yep, sometimes, there stands a prostitute with her hook in the water and I’m forced to review my narrow take on reality. None of them have ever reminded me of Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman) or Xaviera Hollander (“The Happy Hooker”) or even Ashley Dupre (Eliot Spitzer). They’re unkempt, furtive, wary, and certainly don’t evince a high level of job satisfaction. In all of these years I have never seen one smile.

What could have happened to these poor souls? They had to have been once sweet and innocent. What terrible journey led them to solicit all manner of horror here, in a small town, not far from a bend in the river?

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks

by Pablo Neruda

All these fellows were there insidewhen she entered utterly naked.they had been drinking, and began to spit at her.recently come from the river, she understood nothing.she was a mermaid who had lost her way.the taunts flowed over her glistening flesh.obscenities drenched her golden breasts.a stranger to tears, she did not weep.a stranger to clothes, she did not dress.the pocked her with cigarette ends and with burnt corks,and rolled on the tavern floor in raucous laughter.she did not speak since speech was unknown to herher eyes were the colour of faraway love,her arms were matching topazes.her lips moved soundlessly in coral light,and ultimately, she left by that door.hardly had she entered the river than she was cleansed,gleaming once more like a whitel stone in the rain;and without a backward look, she swam once more,swam toward nothingness, swam to her dying.

*The image above is of a print from a series by Eric Avery. An artist MD with a social conscience. “His social content prints explore such issues as human rights abuses and social responses to disease, death, sexuality, and the body”. Check out his stuff at www.docart.com His work can be found in the collections of (among others) The Fogg, The Library of Congress, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Boston Museum of Art.

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This entry was posted on May 21, 2010 at 8:04 pm and is filed under Art, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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